B2C marketing

Insights

As we gear up for Forrester’s Consumer Marketing 2019 Forum, I’m chipping away at a rather large research undertaking that quantifies why direct-to-consumer (DTC) startups deliver value to consumers and how this threatens big brands. In addition to mining rich quant, qual, and behavioral data sets, our advanced analytics illuminates the key drivers that predict […]

For the first time in 15 years, I will not attend Mobile World Congress (MWC). When I mentioned this to some clients, some of them told me, “Yes, you’re right: Mobile is dead. There is no innovation anymore. It is all about AI and blockchain these days.” (?!!) I could not disagree more. The reason […]

After New York City, San Francisco, Sydney, Singapore, and London, Forrester hosted its first event dedicated to customer experience (CX) in Paris. It was a great pleasure for me to host about 150 leaders in a unique venue: the Parc des Princes (PSG’s football stadium!!) for a networking event to discuss CX trends and best […]

After more than two years of loyalty program limbo and “will it or won’t it” debates, Marriott unveiled the name of its unified loyalty program: Bonvoy. This final step in the world’s largest hospitality merger brings together over 100 million members, billions of records, and 6,700 properties in over 130 countries. For Marriott, the stakes […]

The Journey From Energy To Experience In the summer of 2017, I, along with my Forrester colleagues, wrote up the results of our year-long endeavor to build an analytically sophisticated, data-driven framework for emotion-led branding. In my report entitled “Emotions Fuel Your Brand Energy,” I outlined three components of a brand’s “energy” and its ability […]

Only 16% of CMOs are responsible for leading the execution of their firm’s digital transformation. Now is the time to rethink your role. Too few CMOs actively lead or are deeply involved in digital transformation. CIOs, COOs, CXOs, and CDOs have filled the gap but don’t represent the voice of the customer or bring the […]

Warby Parker. Everlane. Casper. MVMT. Bombas. Harry’s. The list of these digitally native, direct-to-consumer (DTC) challenger brands goes on and on — and incumbent consumer brands have taken notice almost as quickly as consumers themselves have turned to these up-and-comers for the products and services they need. But questions abound about what’s driving the increased supply […]

Did you know that artificial intelligence has infiltrated all parts of the advertising process? My guess is, probably not. But chances are, in an era of programmatic advertising when machines are making millions of decisions on billions of ad impressions every day, your advertising is being touched by AI. Awesome, right? But also risky — to your brand’s […]

Each thing you see at CES may be wondrous, but after you’ve seen five variations of the same hundred things, the net effect is clutter and confusion. Let me help sort things out. I’ve had a week away from mood-lit Alexa-enabled toilets, from fierce ping-pong-playing robots, and from the jingle-jangle morning of walking through unending […]

This video gives a 2-minute summary of the biggest mistake Gillette has made with the “We Believe” campaign and what the brand can do now to fix it. If you want more comprehensive guidance on how to manage a crisis, read the report I wrote with my colleague, Emily Collins: “Brands Forget The Rules of Modern Marketing When Crisis […]

In a 2013 article in GQ, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos laid out the then-nascent streaming company’s challenge: “The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” In yesterday’s Q4 2018 earnings interview, CEO Reed Hastings, while not referencing Sarandos’ statement, laid out facts that showed Netflix has achieved — or even […]

In Part 1 of this post, I criticized Gillette for its statement, “We weren’t trying to court controversy. We were just trying to upgrade the selling line that we’ve held for 30 years,” as lacking conviction in the values it claimed that the campaign represented. My first piece of advice was: If you aren’t authentic […]

You’ve likely read the facts: Hulu announced that it has 25 million subscribers and collected $1.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2018. (For more information and analysis, check out this report.) The eye-catching comparison is that Hulu now has more subscribers than any traditional pay TV provider, such as Comcast with just under 21 million […]

Marketers are held to an ever-higher standard of accountability to ROI and business impact. But many marketers struggle to meet these expectations, hampered by long-established habits and lack of knowledge about new data- and analytics-enabled measurement approaches. In this short video, I take apart these misperceptions, describe trends that leading marketers have pioneered, and point […]

I was in Shanghai last weekend to witness the largest 11/11 in history. Alibaba breaks another record, with 2018 GMV reaching RMB213.5 billion (US$30.8 billion), 27% higher than last year’s RMB168.3 billion ($25.3 billion). I’m excited to share some of the event highlights here: Stay tuned for the post-event report on Singles’ Day 2018.

Singles’ Day, the world’s largest online shopping festival, is celebrating its 10th anniversary. There’s no doubt that we will see another record-smashing year, although gross merchandise volume (GMV) will no longer be the highlight. Singles’ Day has always been Alibaba’s testbed for new business models and technologies, and this year is no exception. AI and […]

Like the opening sequence of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the social media landscape is getting “flipped-turned upside down” by the ascendance of stories. Well, that may be a bit dramatic, but they are certainly starting to make waves. Stories are growing in popularity as a mode of sharing and consuming content on social media. […]

“I get knocked down, but I get up again.” — Chumbawamba Halfway through the 20-year-long age of the customer, empowered consumers are more informed about their purchases, demand data privacy, and dictate the experiences that they want. Brands have been beaten down with every misstep, many of which snowballed into broad PR crises: United Airlines, Wells Fargo, Starbucks, […]